As Obama readies economy-focused State of the Union speech, defense cuts loom
President Obama's upcoming State of the Union address on Tuesday is expected to focus on economic revitalization in America, according to presidential aides.
But Mr. Obama's account of the U.S. economic recovery will carry with it an asterisk: the automatic spending cuts of the so-called sequester, due to land at the beginning of March, could deal severe a severe blow to the economy. And less than three weeks out from the onset of sequestration, there is no resolution in sight.
Based on the punchy performance of several key congressional players on the Sunday political talk shows, the parties remain deeply divided on the best path to avert the sequester, with disputes over spending, taxation, and entitlement reform threatening to scuttle any eventual deal.
Will sequester budget cuts create a recession?
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., laid down the gauntlet on "Fox News Sunday", saying that Congress must act to avert the sequester - but not if it means cutting too deeply into Democratic spending priorities.
"It's almost a false argument to say we have a spending problem," she said, pointing to cuts in agriculture subsidies and the 2011 Budget Control Act that slashed hundreds of billions of dollars from discretionary spending. "We've had plenty of spending cuts...what we do need is more revenue and more cuts."
"What I would like to see...is a big, balanced, bold proposal" to reduce the deficit, she said. "Short of that, we must do something to avoid the sequester."
Pelosi's suggestion echoed the president's weekly address over the weekend, in which he called on Congress to pass "balanced cuts and close more tax loopholes until they can find a way to replace the sequester with a smarter, longer-term solution."
GOP: National defense is not "a bargaining chip"
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press", would not accept Democrats' calls for more revenue. "Every time you turn around," Cantor said, the Democrats' "answer is to raise taxes."
The president "just got his tax hike on the wealthy," Cantor said, referring to the recent "fiscal cliff" deal that allowed taxes to rise on personal income in excess of $400,000. "You can't, in this town, turn around and raise taxes every three months. Again, every time, that's his response."
"The House has put forward an alternative plan, and there's been no response" from Democrats, Cantor said. "The bottom line is we want tax reform, but we want to plug those loopholes that the president talks about, to bring down tax rates, because we believe that's pro growth...the president's not talking about that. He's talking about raising more taxes to spend."
Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., seconded Cantor on ABC's "This Week", saying Republicans would "absolutely not" agree to new revenue as part of a sequester deal.
Cole, who angered some conservatives by counseling Republicans to accede to tax hikes for the wealthy during the "fiscal cliff" negotiations, was notably inflexible on the question of raising more revenue. "The president accepted no spending cuts back in the fiscal cliff deal 45 days ago," he said. "So you get no spending cuts back then, then you're going to get no revenue now."
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Nay?........... chirp chirp
-- Governor Jerry Brown
That about sums it up. What a dips$$t And his buddy BO will espouse more of the same higher taxes (he'll call it revenue) and more pork (he'll call it infrastructure)
If stimulus i.e. gov't spending was the answer then just provide stimulus funds to those who hire the unemployed until there are no more unemployed.
Problem solved right. WRONG!
Because the only sustainable growth is that related to goods and services that the consumer wants. The market decides, not the politicians.
"Betrayed is a good word," former Sgt. Munley told ABC News in a tearful interview to be broadcast tonight on "World News with Diane Sawyer" and "Nightline."
"Not to the least little bit have the victims been taken care of," she said. "In fact they've been neglected."
There was no immediate comment from the White House about Munley's allegations.
You called Bush's deficits 'unpatriotic'. How are your larger deficits patriotic? Of course, we'd hear all kinds of reasons, excuses and BS from your talking heads. Really, all it means is that you are even more reckless than Bush.
What are you and your minions thinking? Ohhh, that's right, you're only following the script, pushing your ultra-liberal agenda at any cost, with executive orders. You don't need to think; just shove it down their throats and up their a**holes.
You are a shrewd politician... you could never say, the Bible is all old time bull**it. And you didn't. But your actions speak louder than your lack of words. You want legal gay marriage and all benefits for same-sex couples, you tell the Christian Churches to pay for abortions in your Obamacare scheme, all without paying one bit of heed to the moral compass this nation was founded upon. You ignore and spit in the face of many of the most important teachings in the Bible.
But just remember, things have a way of catching up with you. The speech you gave in 2008 could come back to haunt you.
" And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
'Your' citizens are becoming more bitter every day. Annual Bible sales in America are worth between $425m and $650m; Gideon's International gives away a Bible every second.
And new figures released by the FBI reveal that Americans are still buying guns in record numbers. According to the recently-released FBI figures, 2,495,440 gun background checks were conducted in January, which is the second highest number since officials started keeping records in 1998. December 2012, with 2,783,765 background checks, marked the biggest month for background checks since records began.
There are a lot of people who I think, hate you very much for mocking and disrespecting their beliefs. You're only a politician, not a new god.
Headline: State lacks doctors to meet demand of national healthcare law
"As the state moves to expand healthcare coverage to millions of Californians under President Obama's healthcare law, it faces a major obstacle: There aren't enough doctors to treat a crush of newly insured patients.
Some lawmakers want to fill the gap by redefining who can provide healthcare."
http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-doctors-20130210,0,1509396.story
AND....this does not include the 11 million illegal immigrants that obo wants to grant amnesty to--- nor take into account all the doctors that are retiring due to all the BS they will have to now go thru--
"What's most telling is that some of the people who are most supportive of reform are the very medical professionals who know the health care system best." Barack Obama, October 5, 2009.
We all remember the highly publicized Rose Garden ceremony of smiling doctors in their white coats standing alongside a glowing President Obama ("you look very spiffy in your coats," he approvingly noted) in his attempt to validate his Affordability Care Act to the public before its details were even exposed to public scrutiny.
And we also recall when the AMA endorsed ObamaCare at its inception, an endorsement that led many Americans to believe America's doctors supported the dramatic changes to the U.S. health care system.
The problem is that, unbeknownst to the public and the press, the AMA represents only about one fourth of the nation's doctors.
Meanwhile, contrary to those doctors selected to legitimize ObamaCare in the staged media event (where the White House actually handed out white lab coats to generate the image of official credibility), an overwhelming 70 percent of doctors said, even back in 2011, that they disagreed with the AMA's position on health reform, while only 13 percent agreed with it. In fact, almost half of doctors in that survey even went so far as to say that the AMA stance on ObamaCare was the factor causing them to drop AMA membership.
What has happened to the opinion of doctors, now that ObamaCare has been examined in detail?
Moving the clock forward to this year, thousands of the nation's doctors from all across the country engaged in the full spectrum of clinical practice have had the chance to digest the content of ObamaCare and to see the early impact of the law. Without the filtering by the president's staff, and after far more exposure of the details in the ACA, the nation's doctors have twice expressed their views about ObamaCare.
This past February, 60 percent of more than 5,000 doctors surveyed said the Obama health law would have a negative impact on patient care, while only 22 percent thought it would be positive. And more than half thought it would have a negative impact on their relationships with patients, while only 11 percent thought the doctor-patient relationship would be better. A startling 43 percent said the health care reform itself would likely lead them to retire over the next 5 years, and only 37 percent said that was an unlikely consequence of this law. It is worth repeating that sentiment to understand the impact of ObamaCare - it is viewed as being so destructive that almost half of doctors said they would "likely" soon retire directly because of the law itself.
But perhaps the most impressive statement of all is found in looking at the doctors' voting intentions. Votes for Governor Romney trounced those for President Obama by 19 percentage points (55 to 36 percent), with only 5 percent undecided. Of the nearly 1,000 doctors calling themselves "independents," 51 percent planned to vote for Mitt Romney, while 35 percent planned to vote for Barack Obama. Doctors - those "professionals who know the health care system best" - are overwhelmingly voting for the candidate who repeatedly vows to repeal ObamaCare.